The Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center is a nonprofit farm in the floodplains of Snoqualmie Valley, Washington. Anthony Reyes, the Agricultural Program Manager, manages 81 acres of certified organic land by experimenting and trialing climate adaptive and resilient agricultural practices.

For this Famer-Led Trial project, Anthony wanted to find a cover crop that would meet the needs of the farm – managing climatic challenges, erosion, and weed pressure. Ideally, anything that would be planted would help add biomass and could withstand drought conditions. In addition to testing a few new cover crops, Anthony was interested in manipulating the seeding rate of the cover crops to achieve better soil cover, and was curious to know if the recommended seeding rate was adequate for their soil and growing conditions.

The farm trial investigated the performance of three cover crops at two seeding rates: German Foxtail Millet, Pearl Millet, and Sudex were chosen as cover crops that would be drought tolerant and help with weed suppression, while also adding biomass. Each of these crops were seeded at 100% and 125% of the recommended seeding rate.